Toulouse: the Taillandier architectural firm celebrates its tenth anniversary
Launched in 2012, the Toulouse architecture and urban planning firm Taillandier Architectes Associés celebrates its tenth anniversary this year. Renovation of the Caisse d’Epargne headquarters in the heart of Toulouse, the MEETT exhibition center… The Toulouse landscape owes him a number of outstanding projects and the list continues to grow.
This is the story of a “made in Toulouse” success story. This year, the Toulouse architecture and urban planning firm Taillandier Architectes Associés celebrates its tenth anniversary.
Renovation in 2014 of the Caisse d’Épargne headquarters in the heart of Toulouse, La Cité in the former Halles Latécoère in 2020, MEETT exhibition center represented in 2021… the pencil stroke of Pierre-Louis Taillandier, head of the architectural firm, is at every street corner.
Passive systems, a prelude to eco-construction
“I graduated from the National School of Architecture in Toulouse in March 1989, recalls Pierre-Louis Taillandier. I was lucky enough to immediately join an agency where I was made manager after four months”.
Spotted the same year by the American architect Barton Myers during the Marengo competition in Toulouse, the young graduate was offered a job on the other side of the Atlantic. Once in Los Angeles, in addition to urban project planning with Barton Myers, Pierre-Louis Taillandier became interested in passive systems, a prelude to eco-construction, which has now become the norm.
A first agency in 1993
Three years later, in 1993, with a master’s degree in urban planning from the prestigious Californian university UCLA in his pocket, the expatriate decided to return to his native land. Upon his return, he teamed up with Jacques Sutter and together created the architecture firm Sutter and Taillandier.
“In 2012, I bought out my partner’s shares to launch the Taillandier Architectes Associés agency on my own,” he explains. From about twenty employees at its beginnings, the Toulouse agency now has around a hundred employees, with branches in Paris, Bordeaux and Montpellier.
Significant projects
“This success is above all the result of teamwork with managers who have been present since the beginning. In particular Stéphanie Loche, the group’s HRD, whom I would like to congratulate”, concedes Pierre-Louis Taillandier.
In ten years, the Toulouse urban landscape owes him a number of outstanding projects and the list continues to grow. “We will soon start the restructuring of the building of the former UGC cinema on the Roosevelt alleys where Fnac will move. Work is also being carried out at Victor Hugo’s emblematic car park. Without forgetting the projects in progress such as the International Cité for Researchers or the Cour du Dôme programme”, lists the architect.